Little Druid on the Prairie

I got a new book this weekend. Or rather, I should say, one of my study group mates found someone who had a PDF of a book I’ve been looking for since I started down the path of working with Ing Frea, and that person was willing to share copies of the PDF with us.

This… bothers me a bit.

The book is Visions of Vanaheim, by Svartesol. It is out of print, was only in print for a very short time, and is nearly impossible to find. Yngvi and I have both worked at a used bookstore, and he’s been looking for it consistently for several years. I check all the usual hotspots for rare books online regularly, and have never seen a copy. (Not that I couldn’t afford it, I have literally never even SEEN it.)

Ethically, I am against pirating books. I think people who write books should be paid for their time and effort, because I like reading books, and I want people who write good books to write more good books for me to read.  So far, Visions of Vanaheim has been a treasure trove of information – good, well marked, sourced info from archaeological and literary sources, mixed with well marked UPG that I’ve found pretty enlightening. It’s matched up with some of my personal UPG, which is nifty (it’s fun to have someone else say “Hey, I have that same UPG!”) I haven’t gotten to the sections on Frey/Ing Frea yet, but I am eagerly reading towards them.

(This book alone has made me want to work more with the Vanir/Wans specifically as part of my practice, which is fun and exciting. To my knowledge, the Anglo-Saxons didn’t make a really clear distinction between Wans and Ases, but that doesn’t mean I can’t work with the Wanic group more in my own practice. Or at least, know more about them alongside their more popular Aseic counterparts. My attraction to the Vanir/Wans alone will probably keep me from ever being fully in the Anglo-Saxon camp, because there’s so much more information from other Norse/Scandinavian/Germanic sources.)

So this is me making a promise.

If Svartesol comes out with a second edition of Visions of Vanaheim (which is rumored that he will), I will purchase TWO copies of that book in print, if I can get them. (One for the new edition, and one to pay him for the first edition that I didn’t have to pay for.) If I could pay him for my current copy of his book, I would. But since I can’t, I am putting it out there that if he ever gives me the chance, I’ll pay for it.